Statement of Cosmonaut Magazine’s editorial team on the recent developments in the struggle for Palestinian liberation.
Over the past week, the Palestinians of Gaza, who have endured years of incarceration in a de facto mass concentration camp, engaged in a daring show of armed resistance to the Israeli apartheid state and dealt a shocking military blow to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Like so many anti-colonial movements of the past, the Palestinians of Gaza, subject to constant military repression and economic blockade, have been forced to make the painful, but legitimate decision to liberate themselves through armed resistance, meeting the violence of the Israeli state with violence.
Cowards flinch, traitors sneer. A propaganda deluge has inundated the mainstream U.S. media sphere with pornographic descriptions of horrendous acts allegedly carried out by Hamas, the leading organization of Gazan armed resistance. Tragic civilian casualties have been weaponized by the oppressors to delegitimize the Palestinian struggle for national liberation and prepare the Western public to accept a genocidal military campaign against Gaza. This propaganda has tested the principles of the burgeoning U.S. socialist Left.
We are witnessing the flinch. Once an established tenet of the U.S. socialist movement, solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle has, within days, become a source of embarrassment to cowards recoiling from the ethical questions raised by our commitment to an oppressed people who have chosen the path of armed resistance. In the coming weeks, our movement will be severely tested by the sneer, as traitors and their reactionary masters attempt to silence voices who stand fast in their commitment to the oppressed.
In light of this, the editorial team of Cosmonaut has chosen to affirm our unconditional support of the movement for Palestinian liberation, no matter the form their struggle may take. We’ll keep the red flag flying here.
Donald Parkinson, Jackson Albert Mann, and Aliyah VanPelt,
– Cosmonaut Magazine Editorial Team
Amelia Davenport, Tobias Houlgate, Jibreel Kateb, Peter Moody, and Matthew Strupp,
– Cosmonaut Magazine Central Committee
Cliff Connolly, Lewis C, Renato Flores, and Parker McQueeney,
– Cosmonaut Magazine General Staff
